Juliette Bonneviot, “XenoEstrogens”, 2015. Photo courtesy Hans-Georg Gaul
Spread over roughly twice the size of Texas and increasing by the day is what scientists and ecologists call The Pacific Trash Vortex. Spanning thousands of kilometres from the west coast of North America to Japan, the collection is made of mostly waste and plastic debris spiralling into makeshift islands. Yet, we never see this seemingly mythical, small country bobbing along with dead sea life trailing behind its man-made ass.
Plastic is just one of the industrially compounded products on view at Berlin’s Autocenter. It has been paired with XenoEstrogens by Juliette Bonneviot, which are, in short, synthetic estrogens famously found in birth control pills, silicone, shampoo and pesticides. The lesser of two evils? Think again. They have a radical effect on marine life and mammals: with increased estrogen exposure, male fish have been proven to develop egg yolk proteins and unfertilised eggs, therefore becoming feminised. Bonneviot uses the physical matter initially, taking the chemical core of PET and synthetic xenoestrogens as the material, and then investigating the biological, cultural and philosophical implications.
Juliette Bonneviot, “XenoEstrogens”, 2015. Photo courtesy Hans-Georg Gaul
Bonneviot’s work deals with two huge issues: the environment and gender. While the scale of such concepts is hard to fathom, the seven abstract paintings allow visitors to grasp the terror almost immediately when reading the components of these hybrid abstractions. For example, “Yellow Xenoestrogens”, 2015, is made up of soya beans, antimony, cadmium (used in batteries and reportedly found in wonton soup from Chinese street food vendors) and lastly Phthalates (found in wood floor lacquer). Each painting is a composition of both traditional and unorthodox materials, seemingly careful consideration has gone into both colour and binding techniques. The seven canvases are hung from floor to eye-level, giving an intimate one-to-one viewing experience. They seem spontaneous–a subconscious creation–yet they have the finely tuned colour palate of Mark Rothko’s colour fields, with deep cobalt blues, rust red and battlefield grey. Half the works have a wet-look to them, mocking and nihilistic: stark symbolism on how little time we have left until we change this planet forever.
Juliette Bonneviot, “Yellow Xenoestrogens”, 2015. Photo courtesy Hans-Georg Gaul
Three female busts with small stylish water bottles stand alongside the paintings in clear plastic. They seem ghostly, petrified femininity lost in a world of imitations. Silently, they question our ideas on gender, industry and ecology. Manufactured gender is all around us, as estrogen pollutes the waterways and testosterone can be found in energy drinks. But what we seem to forget is that women have been chemically altering their biological make-up without question since the 1960’s with the common contraceptive “The Pill”, which coincided with the first years of industrial manufactured and mass-produced sale of plastic bottles. Hauntingly the lyrics from pop band Aqua come to mind –“I’m a Barbie girl/in the Barbie world/Life in plastic/it’s fantastic!/You can brush my hair/undress me everywhere/Imagination/life is your creation!”–but at what price?
Text by Penny Victoria Rafferty
“XenoEstrogens” by Juliette Bonneviot is on view at Autocenter until 18 April 2015.
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Juliette Bonneviot, “PET Woman #4”, 2015. Photo courtesy Hans-Georg Gaul